Brain of Las Vegas gunman will be examined by Stanford neuropathologist
The brain of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock is being shipped to a neuropathologist in California who will check for abnormalities that could explain why Paddock fired into a concert crowd, killing 58 people.
Dr. Hannes Vogel, director of neuropathology at Stanford University Medical Center, isn’t optimistic that he will find an explanation, the New York Times reports.
Most psychiatric illnesses can’t be detected through an examination of the brain, but Vogel will search for more than a half dozen neurological possibilities. “I think everybody is pretty doubtful that we’re going to come up with something,” Vogel told the Times. “The possibilities, neuropathologically, for explaining this kind of behavior are very few.”
Vogel said his job may be made more difficult because Paddock apparently shot himself in the head. The damage could interfere with Vogel’s overall assessment of the brain, but the brain will likely be “quite usable” to check for many things that are prompting speculation, he said.
One area of intense focus will be whether Paddock suffered from fronto-temporal lobar degeneration, a sometimes hereditary disease that interferes with executive functions such as decision-making and social interaction.
“These people are notoriously prone to errors in judgment and unrestrained behavior,” Vogel told the Times. He notes the argument against the hypothesis: Paddock was meticulous in his planning.
Vogel will also look for evidence of other neurological problems, including tumors, though he said he has never heard of anyone going on “a homicidal rampage” because of a brain tumor.
A tumor appeared to be a possibility in an examination of the brain of Charles Whitman, a student who shot 45 people in 1966 from a University of Texas building. A pathologist indicated he found a mass in Whitman’s brain, but an expert panel reviewing the case weren’t sure whether the mass was from Whitman’s brain or someone else’s.
Error was also a problem after an initial examination of the brain of Richard Speck, who killed eight nurses in Chicago in 1966. The first exam found a possible abnormality in the brain’s hippocampus, but the brain was lost when it was shipped to a specialist for another look.
